Murder In Paraguay

Hbo Docudrama Tells Frustrating Tale Of Family`s Fight For Justice

April 18, 1991|By Kenneth R. Clark, Media writer.

In 1976, Joelito Filartiga, the 17-year-old son of Paraguayan human-rights activist Joel Filartiga, was lured from his home in Asuncion by police who tortured him to death because of his father`s unbending opposition to the tyranny of dictator Alfred Stroessner.

Thus begins ``One Man`s War,`` an HBO docudrama slated for premiere at 7 p.m. Saturday. It should have been titled ``One Family`s War,`` or even ``One Woman`s War,`` though the latter would have made it difficult to justify ending the story in the middle, ignoring Joelito`s sister, Dolly, and her pivotal role.

``One Man`s War,`` with Anthony Hopkins as the uncompromising elder Filartiga, is a frustrating tale of unspeakable evil, elusive justice and hollow victory.

The monster who murdered Joelito eventually was tracked down and brought to what passes for justice, thanks to Dolly, but you won`t see that in the movie. Now in political exile in the U.S., only Dolly Filartiga can tell that part of the story.

``It`s a nice movie,`` she said of the HBO effort to document her personal hell. ``I think it will give people an idea of what is going on in the world, but it never could be like what we went through.``

Since the murder of Joelito, Stroessner has been overthrown and another dictator has taken his place. But Dolly, giving interviews in promotion of the movie, said little has changed in her native Paraguay. She said she still dares not return for fear of reprisal because of her role in exposing Joelito`s murderer.

``I grew up with this,`` she said. ``Mentally, they castrate you; they make you unable to think. We live on fear. We never know how those people will react.``

Hopkins portrays the elder Filartiga as the odd amalgam of a saint (in his compassion for the poor and the oppressed) and a bull-headed fool in his willingness to expose not only himself but his family to the deadly malice that finally claims his son. At one point in the movie, Filartiga`s wife, Nidia (Norma Aleandro), tells him, ``You run this family the way Stroessner runs the country.``

In the beginning, the influential Filartiga family had backed Stroessner, who rose to power in Paraguay in the 1950s. As his regime becomes more repressive, the volatile Filartiga becomes more vocal in his opposition.

Filartiga, a poet, artist and doctor, infuriates Stroessner by denouncing him on frequent trips to the U.S., where he sells his paintings to support medical clinics he has set up for the poor.

When Joelito is tortured to death by Americo Pena, the police inspector who lives next door, Filartiga goes after him with a vengeance, the government frustrates his every move for justice. His wife and daughter are arrested on trumped-up charges; Dolly, about to graduate from medical school, is forced out; his lawyer is disbarred; and the family`s life becomes a daily hell of harassment and peril.

The official police position is that Joelito was killed in ``a crime of passion`` by Pena, who caught him in an act of adultery with Pena`s married step-daughter. Such a motive is prosecution-free in Paraguay, but Filartiga finally secures enough evidence to prove in court that his son has been tortured to death, only to see Pena spirited out of the country so he never can stand trial.

Finally, the family learns that Pena has surfaced, as an undocumented alien living in a Paraguayan enclave in Brooklyn, and the movie ends as Dolly sets out to track him down.

After months of privation, supporting herself by cleaning other people`s houses, Dolly Filartiga did bring Pena to bay, and, through the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, established a legal precedent by successfully suing him for $10.6 million in a civil action under a 200-year-old anti-piracy statute called the Alien Tort Claims Act.

But Pena was deported back to Paraguay, where he remains free and untouchable by the court ruling. The Filartigas never will collect a penny of their judgment, and, though she won little in the way of material victory for her travail, Dolly Filartiga said she still would do it over again.

``The money isn`t important,`` she said. ``From the beginning, I never thought of the money. I was looking for human rights and justice. There were a lot of Joelitos before, and there have been a lot of Joelitos since. Torture is horrible, physically and psychologically. It`s like breaking into your soul.``

But if the Filartigas saw no profit from their battle, others have. Since their case, numerous other torturers, including Suarez Mason, the infamous Argentine ``lord of life and death,`` have been successfully sued by their victims, and many of them have seizable assets in the U.S.